Blue Zones – No Magic Beans

“We got red beans, we got green beans, coffee beans, lima beans… but no magic beans.”

-       Humpty Alexander Dumpty, Puss in Boots

Spin City

Back in 2016 I worked at a healthcare start-up launching a new primary care model focused on food as medicine. Zoom+Prime embraced the Blue Zone story that if a person ate a diet like the supercentenarians in Okinawa, Japan they would have a greater chance to live to be very old. The Zoom+ founders got themselves in trouble with state regulators for other reasons and were forced to pay a substantial fine.  They were ultimately had to sell their company.

The clinic did achieve some good results, helping consumers diagnosed as pre-diabetes change their eating habits and avoid having to begin taking prescription medications. This was no surprise. Shifting to a plant based diet and getting exercise will improve the health of almost all of us. But the fairy tale of Blue Zones persists, and even us the foundation of a company launched by Dan Buettner.

This year the Ig Nobel awards honored Saul Justin Newman, a Research Fellow at the University College of London based on his data informed research into the malarky that is the Blue Zones. It turns out the proponents of Blue Zones were no more trustworthy than the founders of Zoom+.

Limited public records and pension fraud

Newman’s data driven research that was honored this year was based on leg work, interviews with actual “supercentenarians” and digging into public records (or the lack of them) across many geographies. It turns out the Blue Zone geographies align with poor municipalities that have few if any public records like birth certificates. These are also areas with poor populations with financial incentives to hedge about age in order to start collecting a pension a few years early.

The Blue Zone idea is based at selective data, hand-picked without looking too closely at the source or context. It is was been packaged to appeal to Western consumers and to sell all kinds of products, seminars and services. And while eating more fruits and vegetables and not consuming sugar laden Starbucks drinks will make you healthier, that has nothing to do with what subsistence farmers in rural Japan eat every day.

Post-rationalization

When I was in college back in the 1980s, and Every Breath You Take was top of charts, we would justify our work after it was complete by what we then called “post-rationalization.” This involved cherry picking data to support our work after it was already conceptualized, refined and completed. Today, that questionable approach is known as HARKING – selecting supporting data and research after the fact and presenting it as preceding and informing the final product.

Both the Blue Zone founders and the Zoom+Prime founders sold a story that eating more non-processed foods would drive long life and improved health. While a better diet will certainly result in better health, one doesn’t need to travel to distant destinations to cherry pick specious data in support of that story. Crafting a business using selective, post hoc data is really just building a business on post-rationalization (or HARKing.)

The lesson

Selectively HARKing data to support a new product or service is a dangerous tactic. The Blue Zone company successfully sells cooking classes, meal planners and skin care products, so there are certainly consumers who are buying what they are selling. But in reality, building long term value must be based on substance and facts, and the Blue Zone folks have built their company on something else.

If a company is to avoid being this year’s fad and seeks long term growth and success, hard data must precede and inform your solutions, not the other way around. There are no magic beans.

Copyright 2itive 2024

2itive is a Portland based consultancy founded by Erik Goodfriend, offering a unique combination of market intelligence, knowledge of healthcare payment systems and creative business strategy insights. Feel free to contact us at info@2itive.com